It is another new and powerful feature for the Microsoft Dynamics Spring '14 Wave Release; Service Level Agreements (SLAs) have the ability to track service expectation for cases. The new SLAs allows organizations to set up standards for the amount of time it takes to respond or complete a case. SLAs include four components:

• Applicable From: Determine when SLA is applied (i.e., Created On, Modified On, Follow Up By).
• Business Hours: Sets up when the SLA time is not running, can be used for business hours (e.g., 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.) or holiday schedule (e.g., closed on New Year's Day). If business hours are not set then default is that the SLA is applicable 24/7.
• SLA Details: Determine when to begin executing the SLA and when a SLA is successful, as well as the type of warning and failure actions (e.g., first response for cases, warning after 30 minutes, update case record and failure 1 hour, send email). The SLA details has a similar setup to workflows.
• Notes: User identified comments about the SLAs that can include attachments.

SLA Landing Page

 SLA Details

SLAs are able to be setup as a system default SLA or tie specifically to an Account or Contact or multiple Accounts or Contacts.

In order to monitor SLAs the case form includes a new section called SLA Applicable, which will populate when a SLA is setup. After the case is saved, the appropriate SLA will be applied to the case. If the SLA is setup with a First Response by and/or Resolve by, users will see a date and time for when the first response needs to be sent and/or when the case should be resolved by (i.e., 6/20/2014 1:45 PM). Another new feature on the case form is the ability to customize the form to include a timer, which counts down the days, hours, and/or minutes until the first response needs to be sent and/or when the case needs to be resolved.

Case Form

Before the Spring '14 Wave implemented SLAs, contracts were another way to monitor service agreements between organizations and accounts. Contracts use contract support levels that are allotted in terms of number of incidents, or amount of time. When a case is resolved against a contract, case resolution reduces contract allotment by the appropriate amount.

Some key differences between contracts and SLAs is that contracts track case resolution to the contract allotment, while SLAs track service expectations (i.e., time left to respond or complete a Case). Also SLAs can be setup as a default for the entire organization or a specific account or contract whereas contracts are typically only set up for specific accounts.

SLAs are a great enhancement to Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 and can help organizations keep track of metrics tied to SLAs. It's just one of the many great roll-outs this year. If you are looking for any other Wave updates, head over to our blog to get a deep-dive into all things Spring '14 related as well as anything else Dynamics related. And as always... Happy CRM'ing!